Carl June on CRISPR, CAR–T and how the Vietnam War dropped him into medicine
In August of 2011, Carl June and his team published a landmark paper showing their CAR–T treatment had cleared a patient of cancer. A year-to-the-month later, Jennifer Doudna made an even bigger splash when she published the first major CRISPR paper, setting off a decade of intense research and sometimes even more intense public debate over the ethics of what the gene-editing tool could do.
Last week, June, whose CAR–T work was eventually developed by Novartis into Kymriah, published in Science the first US paper showing how the two could be brought together. It was not only one of the first time scientists have combined the groundbreaking tools, but the first peer-reviewed American paper showing how CRISPR could be used in patients.
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